0New Zealand 0-0 England: Ezilungileyo Test Cricket

Yinto Akuvamile uya kundiva bazobona uthotho apho zonke uvavanyo idibanisa ezintweni kuso-, kwaye nokuba ngaphantsi ngokufuthi ukuba babhiyozele eNgilani ngokusilela ukuba aphumelele series. Kodwa ke loo nto kanye indlela endivakalelwa ngayo thotho azotywe kutshanje eNew Zealand. Ke kaloku, phambi kokuba umkhosi barmy eziwileyo ukuzoba ikota me, ndinike ithuba lokuchaza ngokwam!

Lets start with the most import­ant thing; the qual­ity of enter­tain­ment on offer. Most drawn matches these days are due to someone pre­par­ing a wick­et which hugely favours bats­men. These “con­crete wick­ets” as I tend to call them have fre­quently been found in parts of the sub­con­tin­ent in recent times, with India and Sri Lanka in par­tic­u­lar rack­ing up some gigant­ic scores. These kind of draws don’t provide the level of excite­ment the pub­lic are entitled to expect from Test crick­et. For­tu­nately the wick­ets in New Zea­l­and were excel­lent — they all offered some­thing to both bats­man and bowl­er, and did so quite con­sist­ently across all 5 days. As a res­ult all 3 matches were excit­ing, kwaye zonke 3 cases at the start of the 5^th day a res­ult was still very pos­sible for at least 1 side. The stand­ard of crick­et was­n’t always quite at the peak, but it was­n’t far short and thee were some ter­rif­ic per­form­ances from play­ers on both sides.

Ngoko ke, we were all thor­oughly enter­tained, but that isn’t enough for me to get away with my open­er. What if Eng­land had won con­vin­cingly, as most people expec­ted?  I for one would­n’t have enjoyed it as much, I would have put it down to New Zea­l­and being uncom­pet­it­ive and would­n’t have had as much interest. It isn’t actu­ally all that much fun thrash­ing an oppos­i­tion when it’s entirely expec­ted, unless that oppos­i­tion hap­pens to be Aus­tralia of course. A com­pre­hens­ive Eng­land vic­tory would also have been demor­al­ising for New Zea­l­and and the home crowd and may have led to lower crowds and less atmo­sphere at the games.

Let me get to the real meat of my argu­ment though; for Test crick­et to con­tin­ue to thrive we need the crick­et to be excit­ing, but most of all we need every nation to feel like it can win matches and series. A quick look at the West Indies decline (and the sub­sequent decline in the pas­sion for crick­et there), and a little of the same effect tak­ing hold in Aus­tralia at the moment gives ample warn­ing of what the future could hold. All sup­port­ers of Test crick­et should want lots of com­pet­it­ive teams and close series. New Zea­l­and exceeded expect­a­tions by not only get­ting a draw in the series, but by clearly being the bet­ter side over­all. This is a great way to inspire and engage young home sup­port­ers in Test crick­et, and will hope­fully lead to an even more com­pet­it­ive New Zea­l­and team in the future.